Don Mendoza Today Online 29 Jan 11;
If memory serves, it has been written that we all have a constitutional right to eat well.
I quickly gathered that the writer in Blackwell Publishing's Food And Philosophy (a collection of essays by modern day philosophers and culinary professionals) was referring to civilisation in general. So, theoretically, it would seem that we First World folk in Singapore should know better. Well, we'd like to think that, wouldn't we?
At the risk of sounding like a hypersensitive car alarm that keeps tripping every time someone farts too close to the vehicle, I'm just saying that it surprises me that shark's fin is still being featured in this Lunar New Year's "auspicious bounty" of dining opportunities. Baby shark's fin in some cases. Seriously?
And so I am going to do what I did last year, and the years before that. I am going to do my utmost to not be a giant vinegar-soaked blanket when I once again remind my fellow food lovers - who may still be planning their festive dinner menus - that sharks are people, too.
Okay, so that's not really true. But, hey, no subspecies actually resembles a lawyer either.
All jokes aside, we cannot afford to overlook the fact that the well-being and ultimate survival of this pre-Homo sapiens species (which means sharks were here first) lies in our hands. The outcome will in fact help define our humanity.
And is that, honestly, a risk worth a fancy bowl of soup?
Fact: The annihilation of any subspecies of shark - an apex predator - could quickly spiral into a host of irreversible ecological devastation.
Studies have shown that sharks are vital to the preservation of healthy ocean ecosystems. The very same oceans we mammalian land animals depend on.
What's not to get, I'm often forced to ask. It would, in fact, be easier for an atheist to fathom why some women and a whole lot of men regard Nigella Lawson a goddess of sorts - goodness knows she looks the part. Or why more diners are ready to fork out the equivalent of the price of gold to dine on a certain Italian fungi from Piedmont in a fancy restaurant.
Frankly, I can even appreciate that not all pastry chefs - including a young award-winning American toque named Alex Stupak - like sweets.
So in what would seem like a desperate attempt to prove to myself that culinary morality is not rocket science, and that I'm no Einstein, I asked my five-year-old girl what she thought about the downside of shark's fin consumption.
Statistics eluded her, but the unnecessary cruelty was not hard to comprehend. "It's like eating only the chicken's wings," she replied broodingly. And the wingless birds, my seven-year-old continued in her attempt to clarify, are left to die a slow death.
To eat well is to eat responsibly on both an ethical and a nutritional level. And good food, I've always said, starts with good taste. Frankly, eating sans a conscience is distasteful.
